My understanding is that the shift towards natural gas is largely because it is a very cheap byproduct of fracking (for oil). It happens to be "greener" when burned so gets green-washed also.
I wonder what would happen if oil demand was significantly reduced, thus reducing fracking.
> The Pentagon said the withdrawal was expected to be completed over the next six to 12 months. Germany is home to around 35,000 active-duty U.S. military personnel, more than anywhere else in Europe.[1]
The articles mention withdrawing a BCT (which is ~4000 people) form Germany.
The US currently has 2 BCTs "fully" in Germany. The 2nd Cav Regiment (a Stryker unit.. so infantry mounted on 8x8 APCs) and an Armoured BCT on 9 month rotation (so tanks and IFVs).
There have been a bunch of studies indicating that the rotational ABCT costs more than even a truly forward deployed ABCT. My bet is that it's the ABCT that is going to get withdrawn. It's both the flashier unit, and likely has the highest impact on freeing up money. This also lines up with the withdrawal timelines... since the unit is rotational, they just need to wait for the end of rotation, and just... not send another. Much less disruption.
While the timing was obviously conjunction with current events, this draw down was likely to happen at some point in this term, even in absence of Iran things. Trump literally tried to do this at the end of his last term.
There are definitely still health insurance benefits (I'm Canadian). Yes, our doctor and hospital visits are covered, but many things are covered by employer paid insurance (or not at all):
Yeah, correct, but it's not going to be a $4000/mo line item expense for the employer per employee.
I don't have to deal with this as we are a (very) small business but it's a major headache for larger small businesses. Basically, as an employer it simply isn't fun to be forced to be in the "providing access to healthcare" business when that's not your core business.
>Basically, as an employer it simply isn't fun to be forced to be in the "providing access to healthcare" business when that's not your core business.
It is for most large employers as it helps depress salaries and reduce competition from startups. Employees will want to work for a large employer that lets them pay for health insurance with pre-tax dollars, among other tax advantaged benefits that having a well funded HR department can provide. And employees cannot easily compare compensation at other employers so they are more likely to stick around than shop around, reducing the need to increase pay to keep up with the market.
Employers can also tweak compensation by modifying deductibles/out of pocket maximums/healthcare provider networks, and most people's eyes will glaze over before they can figure out if they got an increase or decrease in their total compensation.
I live and work in Canada. My very generous healthcare coverage for optional stuff including dental is ~$5300 CAD. I've got kids / dog / spouse / etc. and usually opt for the extra coverages including life insurance. Work covers about half of that. 4% tax (which funds the socialized medicine) plus the 2k, call it 5.5% of salary and I get good healthcare in a large Canadian city.
My US benefits were middling in terms of coverage and package when working for a large F500 and went about $16k USD on a 180k salary -- converted is about $19k CAD at todays rates. Including co-pays and fees it's like 10% of salary. At the time I was in a big city with great hospitals and doctors, but not noticeably better than Canada even at the higher price.
> The average 50-something is worth about $1.4 million, according to Empower. But that’s a mathematical average, and the super-rich drive the number way up.
> The “median” 50-something – imagine the middle number in a long list of numbers – is worth a more modest $192,964.
I agree with this. I quibble with the wording "enjoy" thinking. It's probably also true, but it's not always the enjoyment of it, but a general propensity to overthink or dig into the weeds more, with the resulting less actual doing.
And if you dig into the weeds enough, you can find alternatives and counterarguments which can lead to analysis paralysis.
I add that most problems are solved, assuming possessing the average (maybe even sub-average) intelligence needed to execute on them.
Think about weight loss: it's a solved problem, except in extremely rare cases of particular pathologies. Or think about being more attractive to the people we want to attract.
But you can't help but notice that the smartest people are the ones who invoke the laws of thermodynamics and the problems that arise from them, that a calorie is not a calorie in humans, for example, instead of simply eating less, as many less intelligent people intuitively know they should do, and do.
The most intelligent are those who refer to the findings of evolutionary biology, or to largely irrelevant social trends and mores, when pondering why they cannot get laid, instead of working to be more assertive, confident, outgoing, and fit, as the less intelligent are more likely to do, without thinking about it too much.
Or the endless conversations and debates, mostly online because in real life basically nobody cares, about God and religion and atheism, leading, as usual, to nowhere, while the less intelligent intuitively believe or not and that works for them.
As usual, there are selection effects at play, and we notice what we want to notice, ignoring, for the most part, other portions of the distribution of outcomes.
Nowadays, it is fashionable to say "you can just do things". And what some of the intelligent people miss is that they can just be happy. "But how can I be happy if nobody looks at me?" -- See above.
Sometimes, whats meaningful to an individual becomes cloudy (maybe not everyone gets this, but some do). Or they feel like they are interpreting it wrong or something because it isn't mapping to the cultural expectations and what we "should" find meaningful.
He (RFK) didn't just critique the exclusion of children that died:
> The exclusion included all children who died before age two, those diagnosed early with respiratory conditions, and an astonishing 34,547 children — 2.8% of the study population — whose vaccination records showed the highest aluminum exposure levels.
> ... The authors, without explanation, deemed these high exposures “implausible,” even though those implausibly high exposures are routine for American children who follow the recommended immunization schedule.
I'm not arguing the study should be retracted, but asking why those high exposure children were excluded seems reasonable. Also, the children who died presumably died at some point after receiving vaccinations. Excluding them entirely seems like it could miss potential harm and seems relevant to the studies purpose of links to chronic disease.
I agree with you that vaccines are beneficial. It still makes sense to understand the tradeoffs and ask reasonable questions about potential harms.
There are devices called "holter monitors" that a person wears continuously and which measure your blood pressure frequently. I would call this continuous though it's more like every 15 minutes or whatever it's programmed for. It's all without your intervention. My ex bought one when they wanted more data about their high blood pressure.
I'm well aware of this, but this is different from what we're discussing here. While Holters measure continuously, they don't give you continuous feedback. The general procedure is that the data is either gathered and downloaded or sent over network and the patient sees it only after the gathering is done.
Because I fainted, I wore a holter monitor for a month that did not measure blood pressure but instead my EEG, uploading the data via the cellular network. My cardiologist said it measured about 1 million heatbeats in that time.
I mean, it probably depends on the type of employee. I assume folks doing deliveries or working in warehouses aren't getting stock packages. I wonder if the admin or accounting folks do.
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